From Hell
by DRL
Summary: Duo discovers that every cloud has a silver lining


**From Hell**

**By DRL**

I don't suppose it would have happened if I hadn't seen the jacket.  It was definitely that that had made me relax my vigilance long enough for it to happen.  Afterward I tried to tell myself that it wasn't all that great of a jacket anyway, but it was.  Funnily enough, I couldn't seem to call to mind the guy who was wearing it.  At least I think it was a guy, although it could have been a girl.  Hell, it could have been a monkey for all I could remember.  The cops asked me if I could remember anyone hanging around at the time.  Yeah, there were some people there, but I don't remember them.  Who in the hell goes people-watching in a public library for christsake!

I remembered the jacket well enough though, not the guy _in_ the jacket but the jacket.  The guy (or girl) wearing it was standing with his back to me, looking at the books on the shelves directly in front of the table I was working at, so I had the peach of a view of it.  It had to have been the coolest thing I had ever seen.  Cut like a biker's jacket, it was made from leather.  Not cheap leather that looks like the kinda stuff they make the booths of a diner out of, but smooth, supple leather, the kind you see in the store windows of the fancy shops on Main Street.  Yeah, this was good stuff.  Anyway, it was the design that caught my eye, not the fabric.  Emblazoned across the shoulders were the words 'FROM HELL'.  Now about six months previously the words would have meant nothing in particular to me but as it was, those words were the whole reason I was in the library at all.

You see I was studying criminology at the University (yeah, I know, but it seemed a good idea at the time).  I was in my second year and it was going okay.  Actually, it was going better than okay.  I was considered the best student in my class and because of this my tutor asked me to help him with some research for a book he was writing, but I suspected that he also wanted to get into my pants.  It was never gonna happen, but I let him think so just to get a better rate out of him and it paid much better than flipping burgers or pumping gas.  The book he was writing was about 'Jack the Ripper', a serial killer who murdered and mutilated a bunch of women in London a couple hundred years ago.  The cops back then received a bunch of letters from people claiming to be The Ripper, but the only one that they thought was genuinely from him began with those very words – 'FROM HELL'.  I must have read that letter a thousand times and the words were firmly imprinted on my brain.

Like I said, those same words were right across the back of the jacket written in letters around three or four inches high.  They were picked out in a shiny, fiery-red thread and were all spooky looking, like you'd expect to see on an old horror movie poster, you know, kinda creepy.  Underneath the lettering, right in the centre of the back was this upside down knife.  When I say upside down, I mean that the point was facing downwards.  The coolest part of the whole thing was that the blade of the knife was made to look as though it had been dipped in blood and blood seemed to be dripping from the point.  The blood was stitched from a shiny red thread, the same as the letters only darker in colour and the silver blade of the knife was stitched silvery lurex thread.  The handle of the knife was black and so was the leather of the jacket, so to make it visible the handle was encrusted with shimmering little black beads which picked up the ambient light reflections and made the black handle stand out against the black of the jacket. 

 I would have given every penny I had to own a jacket like that and I got to wondering how much something like that would cost.  I was certainly no expert, but I could tell that it would probably be more that I could earn in a year of researching, and then some.  As I was admiring this work of art and speculating on the possible cost of it, some woman walked across the room in front of me and it was lost to my view for a second or two.  In that moment I realised that the woman who had walked past was the same one who had been at the copier making a copy of Tolstoy's 'War & Peace' from the size of the pile of papers she had been copying.  Well I grabbed my chance, caught up the stuff I wanted to copy and made a bolt for the copier.

That must have been when it happened, but I didn't notice until much later.  Not until I was ready to leave the library.  I reached down and felt for my backpack, but it wasn't there.  At times like this it's funny how your mind refuses to acknowledge the obvious.  The backpack was not at my feet where I had left it, so I groped around some more, widening the scope of my search.  My mind refused to believe what first my hands and then my eyes as I looked down at the floor around my chair for confirmation, were telling me.  But there was no doubt about it – the bag was gone.

That was the beginning of a nightmare.  The library staff were real sympathetic and helpful.  Well at least they tried to be helpful, but there wasn't all that much that they could do.  The cops were sympathetic too in their way, but they'd seen this a thousand times before so I suppose they couldn't help but be mechanical and perfunctory about it.

"We're sorry Mr Maxwell," They told me, "There's a slim chance that you may get the bag and some of the contents back, but you'd better kiss goodbye to the money."

Yeah, well I'd kinda figured that myself.  Virtually every penny I owned was in that bag.  I'd just cashed the cheque for my research work for last month.  I had planned to pay my rent and then stock up on some much-needed groceries, maybe treat myself to a Chinese takeaway that evening if there was enough left over, taking into account my living expenses for the month.  Well it looked as though it was back to living on ramen noodles – cheap and cheerless.  It was not only my money that was gone.  The keys to my apartment, my driver's license, my public transport season pass, some of my textbooks (purchased with money carefully harvested from my slender means), a few essays I had spent a lot of time working on and I was due to hand in soon and most importantly, the only draft of my course thesis (a study comparing and contrasting serial killing with mass murder, working on an interesting theory that all mass murderers are really serial killers who lack patience) and sundry other personal bits and pieces.  I mentally berated myself for having been so stupid as to get up and leave the bag lying unattended, a thing I had never done before.  After all, having had nothing for most of my life, I was quite good at keeping a close eye on the things I eventually _did_ managed to acquire.  This was a pointless exercise however; there was no use crying over spilt milk.

The staff at the library were so embarrassed that such a thing could happen on their hallowed premises that they felt moved to lend me some money so I could catch the bus home and they arranged for a locksmith to meet me at my apartment so that he could let me in.  He also changed the locks for me because not only were my keys in the bag, but my address also and I didn't fancy a home-visit from the bastard who had stolen my bag.  I had no means of paying him, my one and only credit card also being in the bag, but the kindly old soul wrote me out a bill and told me I could pay it whenever I was able to.

Although the kind old locksmith went some way to restoring my faith in human nature, alone in my apartment I stripped down to my underwear, lay on my bed and cried like a baby, so upset and unsettled was I by what had happened, spilt milk be damned.  I cried myself to a fitful sleep and woke feeling a little in the doldrums still, but determined to make the best of a bad job.  It would take more that some son of a bitch stealing his life in a backpack to set Duo Maxwell back.  I'd lived through worse... much worse.

I showered and dressed.  I hadn't felt like eating the night before, (which was just as well because I had no money to buy anything for dinner) and I was just wondering if I could find enough change down the back of the sofa to scrape together the price of a bagel for breakfast, when my door buzzer sounded.  It was the postman who claimed to have 'a package for Duo Maxwell'.  Puzzled, I buzzed him up and signed for a large, heavy, irregular shaped package, expertly wrapped in brown paper.  The name and address, written in neat block capitals, were indeed mine, so my curiosity piqued, I shrugged and opened it.  

I don't know what I had done to deserve it, but the gods had really smiled on me that morning.  Inside the package was my backpack.  My legs buckled with surprise and relief and I sank to my knees on the floor.  The weight and the bulk of the bag told me that at least my text books were still in it, but with practicality uppermost in my mind (but without much real hope), I immediately thrust my hand into the pouch where I had put the money.  To my utter astonishment I drew out a bundle of notes and a small sheet of white paper, folded in half across its width.  Without stopping to count the money, I unfolded the sheet.

_Dear Mr Maxwell_

_I hope this is your bag.  Your name and address were on some of the things inside, so I assume that it must be.  I found it on top of some rubbish bins at the back of my apartment building.  It seemed to have some important things in it so I thought you might be glad to have it back.  Luckily, your money is still in it also.  Everything is exactly as I found it, but if there is anything else I can tell you, my cellphone number is written at the bottom of the page._

_Yours Sincerely_

_Heero Yuy_

Heero Yuy huh?  Sounded like a Japanese name.  Well as far as I was concerned, Heero Yuy was an angel, I loved him and I wanted to have his children (I assumed that he was a guy, but you never could tell with these Asian names).  I counted the money.  It was all there – my rent, my groceries and my Chinese takeaway.  Everything else was still in the bag too.  My faith in human nature fully restored, I grabbed the phone, punched in the cellphone number from the note and waited.

"Yes?" Came the curt reply after about two rings.  I was totally unprepared for and a little taken aback by the brusqueness of the reply, but I persevered.

"Heero, er, Mr Yuy?"  I said uncertainly.

"Yes, what do you want?"  Heero Yuy was definitely a guy and he sounded distinctly pissed off.  I swallowed hard and soldiered on.

"It's er, it's Duo Maxwell here."

"Ah yes," His tone mellowed considerably, "You got your bag back okay."  It was a statement not a question.

"Yeah, I did, and I just called to say thanks for taking the trouble to return it to me.  It was real good of you."

"It was no trouble."

"Sure it was.  You had to package it up, schlep all the way across town to the post office, then wait in line until an assistant was free and god only knows how long that must have been, then you had to pay, oh I don't know how much to send it, it's not exactly light and you sent it next-day delivery, and ..."

"It was no trouble Mr Maxwell."  He cut me off and I thought I detected something that seemed like mirth in his voice.

"Duo."  I corrected him absently.

"It was no trouble Duo."  He said for the third time.

"Well, thanks anyway.  You have no idea how glad I was to get that package.  What can I do to show my gratitude for what you did?  Well I can return the money for the postage for starters."  I offered, mentally calculating how much that was likely to be in relation to the bundle of notes in my hand.

"That won't be necessary Duo."

"Oh, well if there's anything else I can do, anything at all..."

"Have dinner with me."

"What?"

"Have dinner with me... tonight."  

I thought I had misheard, but no, that was what he said.  I can't say I wasn't surprised by his request, but I agreed.  I dunno, maybe the guy was lonely and he just wanted some company.  We agreed to meet at one of the most expensive restaurants in town.  He made the suggestion and I nearly choked, but I agreed.  Although it had been his idea, I fully intended it to be my treat.  Paying for a meal there for both of us would just about break me after my rent, never mind the groceries, and I could forget the takeaway but it was the very least I could do and a small price to pay for what he had done for me.

I hung up and went straight across the hall to my best friend Hilde's apartment.  I gave her the whole story and told her that she had to come over and help me find something to wear.  Hilde's  great.  She's a struggling fashion designer (about to make it big any day now) and if anyone could help me find something suitable to wear to a smart restaurant from my abysmal wardrobe, Hilde could.  I had no classes that day so she made me breakfast and we spent the rest of the day together in her apartment, just hanging out.  We spent a good deal of time and had a lot of fun speculating on what kind of a person Heero Yuy was to have made such as strange request, and by the time I was spruced and ready for my 'date' I firmly believed I was going to meet an elderly widower, originally from Japan (although he had no accent), whose children had grown up, left home and never called or wrote.  Something of a curmudgeon, he also had a kind and benevolent side to his nature.

Hilde had dressed me up in an ensemble culled from our joint wardrobe resources.  The boots and jeans, both black, and the plain white collarless shirt I wore were mine and the full-skirted brocade frock coat was hers.  A few years ago she had designed the costumes for a movie about the French Revolution and the coat had originally been designed for the star of the movie, who was playing the role of a French aristocrat in danger of losing his head to 'Madame La Guillotine'.  When the coat was eventually made it turned out to be a little tight across the chest (the actor having famously gained a pound or two during filming) and Hilde ended up keeping it.  It fitted me like a glove, and I had to admit that I cut quite a dashing figure in it.  She had loosed my waist-length hair from its customary braid and had caught it up at the nape of my neck with a black silk scarf.

Hilde drove me to the restaurant in her beat-up old VW Beetle, and as I made my way to the table where I was informed that 'Mr Yuy awaited me', I realised how wrong we had been.  Heero Yuy was far from elderly.  In fact, he was no older than I was myself and he was absolutely beautiful.  I know that men aren't usually described as beautiful, but that is the only word to describe the person seated at the table, who rose to shake my hand as I approached.  I took in everything, from his simple dark suit and open-necked white shirt to his fashionably tousled chocolate-brown hair to his porcelain-smooth, café au lait skin, but it was his eyes that had me hooked.  They bore the epicanthal folds that betrayed his ethnic origin but unexpectedly they were a striking shade of blue.  I stared into them as I took my seat, and I don't think I tore my eyes from his throughout the entire meal.

We talked and talked, well I talked mostly and he listened, although I did find out that he offered consultancy services and designed computer programs for large companies and organisations on a freelance basis.  I told him about my thesis subject and he seemed real interested.  I felt a bit like a fish out of water sitting in a place like that with a guy like him, and I actually told him that.  That was the funny thing about it, from the start it was like we were old friends.  I felt like I could tell him anything, just as though I had known him all my life.  I think I actually did tell him everything.  Some of it wasn't all that nice to hear, but I told him all the same.  There was no awkwardness between us at all, considering we had only just met.  We just got on like a house on fire.  

Anyway, we had a wonderful time and afterwards we walked around the city a little bit.  By the way, he flatly refused to let me pay for dinner and I had more than enough money to buy him a drink or two, so I took him to a bar I knew and we met a few friends of mine there.  He seemed to get along with them real well.  In fact, I think they assumed that we were, you know, really dating, and I must say that I felt kinda flattered that they thought a guy like that would look twice at someone like me.  When we eventually left the bar I looked at my watch and mumbled something about it's being late and that I supposed I ought to get home, which was about the last thing I actually wanted to do.  He agreed that yeah, he supposed I ought to, but he seemed as reluctant as I did.  We stood outside the bar for a moment or two in silence, ostensibly waiting for a taxi to happen by, then in the light of a street lamp he turned to me, cupped my cheek in his hand, looked me dead in the eye and said,

"Would you like to come home with _me_ Duo?"

"I thought you'd never ask."  I replied boldly.

He kissed me then and I swear to god, I think I lost my mind.  I have never wanted anyone so badly in my entire life and I kinda got the feeling that the thing was mutual.   We dispensed with the taxi and walked, hand in hand, the short distance back to his apartment block, which was one of those new, modern ones with lots of glass and breathtaking views, although I paid this scant attention at the time, having eyes for nothing else but him.  We could scarcely keep our hands off each other as we rode the elevator up to his apartment, and when we finally got there we gave in to our overwhelming desire for each other (yeah on the first date, but hell, I would have married the guy on the first date if he'd have asked me to).  We made hot, passionate love well into the night (or should I say into the morning) and we both gave voice to our passion to such an extent that I hoped his walls were thicker than those of my apartment, otherwise his neighbours would sure be pissed at him tomorrow.

We fell asleep in each other's arms and when I awoke it was barely dawn.  He was still asleep so I gently disengaged myself from his embrace, rose from the bed and, pausing to slip a shirt on over my nude body, I negotiated my way to the kitchen.  I chose his shirt rather than mine because it smelled of him and it made it seem as though his arms were still around me.  I brewed a pot of coffee (no mean feat in an unfamiliar kitchen, especially one as large and well-equipped as his was), poured myself a cup and went back to the bedroom.  Thoroughly convinced that I was totally and utterly in love, I sat on the bed beside him, sipping my coffee and watching him sleep in the burgeoning light of the breaking dawn. 

 Suddenly, I felt the urge to see more of him, to take a look at the things that were his, the things that he owned.  I put down my cup, rose gently from the bed so as not to wake him, then I embarked on a voyage of discovery.  I looked over the neatly ordered items on the shelves and surfaces in his bedroom and the toiletries and cosmetic items in the bathroom, picking up the odd item here and there to inspect it closely, then replacing it exactly as and where I found it, so precisely was everything placed.  I went to his wardrobe and on sliding back the large mirrored door, I was not surprised to see that this was precisely and neatly ordered also.  I took in the many pairs of shoes, each pair in its own little pigeonhole, the stacks of folded t-shirts and sweaters, the rows of shirts, pants, jackets and coats that hung on hangers suspended from rails at various strategic heights.  The guy had a lot of clothes, at least three times as many as I had, I noted, and as I ran my hand along a row of what appeared to be outdoor garments, something caught my eye – just a flash of familiar colour as the garments swung gently under my touch.  I went back along the rail, sliding each garment aside as I inspected the next until I came to it.  Realisation suddenly dawning, I grinned broadly as I gazed upon the wondrous vision I had seen for the first time only the day before, although it seemed like an age ago to me now.  I ran my fingers lovingly across the lettering 'FROM HELL' written across the shoulders as I thought to myself, 'well, it was a hell of a way to give a guy your phone number'.


End file.
